Jul 17 - 15th Week in OT - Wednessday

+ Our readings today marvelously speak of a new and seemingly illogical way of seeing things: which was introduced by God way back in the time of Moses, and whose baffling counterpart still mystifies, in the time of Jesus, and likewise for us today. The proper way to see things is with the “both/and” perspective and not the ingrained “either/or” viewpoint of the Western mind.

Moses is the first to be introduced to this much more inclusive and really “logical” and more accurate way of seeing things: all of a sudden the LORD appeared to Moses as a flaming presence in a bush that, though apparently alight, was not burning, decaying or diminishing the bush at all. So we can rightly say that the bush was “burning and not burning” at the same time: the category of “burning/destruction” – with its consequent – “a bush, or anything else, is either in a destructive fire-based mode / or it is not – it can’t be both burning and not burning at the same time. The LORD dismisses this logic by burning the bush but not consuming it.

This is one of the mysteries that Jesus speaks about in the gospel passage: revealed to the lowly and the childlike, which again seems like a “logical impossibility!” How can the uneducated understand the mysteries – including the “burning bush?” It is precisely because they are children – the broad, wide and open link between themselves and God is still pretty much untampered with – as it exists in all of us – to about age 6 or 7, and then gradually decreases until age 14 when it is pretty much sadly forgotten – unless the child is taught that regular prayer and meditation and even contemplation can keep the link opening and running smoothly.

For  us who are not children, for us who may have forgotten the “both/and” freedom on the “burning bush” – we too are invited daily into the realms of meditative and even contemplative connection and communication with God – who can once again re-establish within us the forgotten “logic of God” – which is not the logic of men and women – but only the logic of children.

The love of God is wide, expansive and all encompassing: EVERYTHING, and EVERYONE BELONGS! we all simply belong to the God of the Burning Bush! Amen.